Top 10 reading about women and the sea

This is a writer's Top 10 books about women and the sea. Compiled by Charlotte Runcie, it appeared in The Guardian , 27 Feb 2019 and includes brief summaries of all the books.  
See https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/27/top-10-books-about-women-and-the-sea#comment

As someone who knows about the huge range of gendered maritime history I find the list to be mainly about the metaphysical sea. It's about the outsider's idea of the timeless sea as something one romantically gazes upon, rather than an element one works with, today. 
And it's very interesting and thought provoking. I hope people will add their own favorites.

1. Female Tars: Women Aboard Ship in the Age of Sail by Suzanne Stark (non fiction)
2. The Waves by Virginia Woolf (fiction)
3. The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh (fiction).
4. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson (fiction)
5. The Outrun by Amy Liptrot (fiction)
6. Petticoat Whalers: Whaling Wives at Sea by Joan Druett (non fiction)
7. Sea Journal by Lisa Woollett (autobiography)
8. The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan (fiction)
9. The Salt Path by Raynor Winn (autobiography)
10. Katie Morag’s Island Stories by Mairi Hedderwick(fiction)

The best of all, in my view

Commentators also recommended:

• The Log of the S.S. The Mrs Unguentine by Stanley Crawford (fiction)  
• El SIglo de las Luces (Explosion in a Cathedral, usually, in English) by Alejo Carpentier (fiction).
• Ahab‘s Wife, Sena Jeter Naslund (fiction) 
• Watercolour Sky (fiction) William Riviere
• The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See (fiction)
• Diving Belles: And Other Stories by Lucy Wood (fiction)

New suggestions are being added by the hour so I recommend that you keep visiting the site for some really good ideas.

NOTE

Runcie is a journalist and the writer of a new book: Salt on Your Tongue: Women and the Sea. (Canongate, 2019)

It is described as:

•  'A lyrical exploration of the sea, how it inspires art, music and literature and how it connects us' 
• 'An ode to the ocean, and the generations of women drawn to the waves or left waiting on the shore'.

Singapore Navy woman captain

(Lim Huay Wen image from
http://www.mindef.gov.sg/imindef/resourcelibrary/cyberpioneer/topics/articles/features/2011/may11_cs.html#.VQ1EtY5_SuQ)

Today's Borneo Post has just published a light interview with commanding officer Lim Huay Wen. This week she met naval leaders from other countries at the military-industrial showcase event LIMA'15, Malaysia's Langkawi International Maritime and Aerospace Exhibition.


REMARKABLE? NO,SENSIBLE.
At a time when seagoing women high-flyers are still unusual in the naval world, Captain Lim was saying what many women in command of ships have been stressing for over four decades now: women's competence to command ships is not remarkable.
In her very positive and tactful account Captain Lim didn't go on to say, as women pioneers often do, that although women's competence may be equal (or even superior) to that of men, their opportunities to exercise their competence are not yet equal enough.
Women ashore, however, are involved at the highest levels of maritime security, including anti-piracy.

MANUFACTURING SYMBOLIC WOMEN
In talking to women maritime pioneers I've repeatedly found that they feel the press make much - too much - of women who've broken through barriers, or tried to. And too often at sea women are taken as signs of what other women are and could become (even though Lim's male counterparts would not be seen as symptomatic of all men, of course.)
It puts pressure on women to be unnaturally exemplary.


'Commanding officer Lim raises women’s pride at sea:
LANGKAWI: Lt. Col. Lim Huay Wen is no ordinary female officer in the Singaporean Navy. She is, in fact, the commanding officer of one of the republic’s frigate vessels.
At 35, Lim, who was appointed as the commanding officer of the Republic of Singapore Ship (RSS) Stalwart in January this year, is among the few women who had reached such heights in their naval career.“Definitely I’m not the first as there had been a few (female officers) before me who had commanded a navy ship,” she said when met during the opening ceremony of a Multinational Maritime Security Exercise 2015, in conjunction with the Langkawi International Maritime and Aerospace Exhibition 2015 (LIMA’15) here.


MOSTLY MALE OFFICERS
Lim was easily distinguished at the event as the hall for the ceremony was filled mostly by male officers but she apparently had no qualms about the situation.“It is not about gender. It’s all about capabilities,” she said.
Lim said she joined the Singapore Navy in 1999 after completing her national service and her family had been supportive of her decision.“As a woman, I want to do my part by joining the navy and my parents were very supportive of my decision,” she said.From then on she never looked back and rose up the ranks which offered her the opportunity to travel and experience the world beyond her homeland.
Since joining the navy, her tour of duty included a counter-piracy mission in the Gulf of Eden and a military exercise in Hawaii.“As a commanding officer, this (the maritime security exercise in Langkawi) is my first deployment and I am looking forward to more deployments in the future,” she said.

TIGHT-KNIT 'FAMILY' ABOARD
Lim said her longest mission on a ship had been for 103 days when she was in the Gulf of Eden.
“Life on a ship is no different whether you are a male or female (officer). It’s (the atmosphere was) a tight knit situation and we are just like in a family with teamwork and working together to achieve a common goal,” she said. While it had been a smooth sailing career for her for the last 16 years, she said that she had learnt a lot along the way and her trip to Langkawi was no exception.

OTHER COUNTRIES: EXERCISE
“LIMA’15 was my first experience to meet other navies from other countries. Meeting them really makes me think that life in the navy is very valuable.
“Whether you are from Singapore, Malaysia, United States or India (some of the countries taking part in the exercise), we are all the same. We as seafarers share the same understanding,” she said.

JUDGED ON MERIT
Lim, who had a crew of more than 75 personnel under her command in RSS Stalwart, said opportunities were aplenty for women to succeed in the naval career.
She said her career had so far taught her that there was no gender competition in the navy and everyone was judged based on merits.
“As long as you are ready to do the job, the chance to command a ship would be there,” she said.

NATIONAL LOYALTY
She said that those who joined the navy were those who wanted to do their part for their love of their country.
“If you are adventurous and you want to get a taste of the world, this (the navy) is a place where you can grow up and contribute to society,” she added as an advice to other young ladies aspiring to follow her footsteps. — Bernama'

Read more: http://www.theborneopost.com/2015/03/21/commanding-officer-lim-raises-womens-pride-at-sea/#ixzz3V0mhxCjS

Reading about women seafarers

This is a select list of books and articles on women seafarers and women at the sea’s interface. Intended mainly for non-academics, it's to share, a resource from which many can benefit.
I hope people will send me additions to it. It would be good to include publications from countries other than the UK, particularly Scandinavia, China, and Asian and African countries.

*****

1. WOMEN SEAFARERS INTERNATIONALLY

International
Phillip Belcher, Helen Sampson, Michelle Thomas et al, Women Seafarers: Global employment policies and practices, International Labor Office, Geneva, 2003.
David Cordingly, Heroines and harlots: women at sea in the great age of sail, Macmillan, London, 2001.
Margaret S Creighton and Lisa Norling, Eds, Iron Men, Wooden Women: Gender and seafaring in the Atlantic World, 1700-1920, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore and London, 1996.
Linda Grant De Pauw, Seafaring Women, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1982.
Diane Dugaw, Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650-1850, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989.
Joan Druett, She Captains: Heroines and hellions of the sea, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1999.
Leon Fink, Sweatshops at Sea: Merchant seamen in the world's first globalized industry, from 1812 to the Present, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2011.
Basil Greenhill and Ann Giffard, Women Under Sail: Letters and journals concerning eight women travelling or working in sailing vessels between 1829 and 1949, David & Charles, Newton Abbot, 1970.
Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen and ‎David Kirby, The Baltic and the North Sea, (three chapters on maritime women, Routledge, Abingdon, 2013.
Colin Howell and Richard J Twomey, Eds, Jack Tar in History: Essays in the history of maritime life and labour, (four chapters on gender) Acadiensis Press, New Brunswick, 1991.
Celia Mather, Sweatships: What it’s really like to work on board cruise ships, War on Want, London.
Jo Stanley, Bold in Her Breeches: Women Pirates across the Ages, Ed, Pandora, London, 1995.
Minghua Zhao, Seafarers on Cruise Ships: Emotional Labour in a Globalised Labour Market, Seafarers’ International Research Centre, Cardiff University, 2002.

US & Canada
Charlene Atkinson, Sue Ellen Jacobs and Mary A Porter, Winds of Change: Women in Northwest Commercial Fishing, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1989.
Lesley Leyland Fields, The Entangling Net: Alaska’s Commercial Fishing Women Tell their Stories, University of Illinois, Urbana and Chicago , 1997
Lucy Gwin, Going Overboard: The onliest little woman in the offshore oilfields, Viking Press, New York, 1982.
Vickie Jensen, Saltwater Women at Work, Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver, 1995.
Jeanne Marie Lutz, Changing Course: One woman's true-life adventures as a merchant marine, New Horizon Press, Far Hills, New Jersey, 2003.
Sari Mäenpää, ‘Shipping Out: “The Story of America's Seafaring Women”’, International Journal of Maritime History, Vol 19,no 2, 2007, p472.
Nancy Taylor Robson, Woman in the Wheelhouse, Tidewater Publishers, Centreville, Maryland, 1985.
Cristina Vignone, 'Women Workers and Gender Equality on the Ocean Liner,' Crossing on the SS Normandie, http://www.fordham.edu/normandie/people.


The Antipodes
Patsy Adam-Smith, There was a Ship: The story of her years at sea, Penguin, Ringwood, Australia, 1995.
Sally Fodie, Waitemata Ferry Tales, Ferry Boat Publishers, Auckland, 1995.
Dee Pignéguy, Saltwater in Her Hair: Stories of women in the New Zealand maritime industry, VIP publications, Auckland, 2001.

Scandinavia
Olive J Roeckner, Deep Sea ‘Sparks’: A Canadian Girl in the Norwegian Merchant Navy, Cordillera, Vancouver, 1993.
Mira Karjalainen, In the Shadow of Freedom: Life on board the oil tanker, The Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters, Helsinki, 2007.

The Soviet Union
Jo Stanley, Soviet women Commanding Ships, 4 July 2014, http://genderedseas.blogspot.co.uk.

The UK
Linda Collison,
-Surgeon’s Mate,(The Patricia MacPherson Nautical Adventure Series of novels), Fireship Press, Tucson, AZ 2010.
- Barbados Bound, Fireship Press, 2012, Tucson, AZ .
Crabb, Brian James, Beyond the Call of Duty: The loss of British Commonwealth mercantile and service women at sea during the second world war, Shaun Tyas, Donington, 2006.
Cherry Drummond, The Remarkable Life of Victoria Drummond, The Institute of Marine Engineers, London, 1999.
Violet Jessop, Titanic Survivor: The Memoirs of Violet Jessop, Stewardess, John Maxtone-Graham, Ed, Sutton, Stroud, 1998.
Mary Lacy, Mary Lacy ‘The Female Shipwright’, Margarette Lincoln (intro), Caird Library Reprints, National Maritime Museum, London, 2008.
Sari Mäenpää,
-'Women below Deck: Gender and Employment on British Passenger Liners, 1860-1938',
The Journal of Transport History, Vol 25, no 2, 2004, pp57-74.
- ‘Comfort and guidance for female passengers: The origins of women's employment on British Passenger Liners 1850–1914’, Journal for Maritime Research, Vol 6, no 1, pp145-64.
Jo Stanley,
- Women at Sea: Canadian Pacific Stewardesses in the 1930s, self-published, Liverpool, 1987.
- ‘The company of women: stewardesses on liners, 1919-1938’, The Northern Mariner/ Le Marin du Nord, Vol 9, no2, 1999, pp69-86.
- ‘Black Women on British Ships’, The Black and Asian Studies Newsletter, no 28, pp10-13, 2000.
- ‘Co-venturing consumers “travel back”: Ships’ stewardesses and their female passengers, 1919-1955’, Mobilities, Vol 3, no 3, 2008, pp437-54.
- ‘Caring for the poor souls: inter-war seafaring women and their pity for passengers,’Gendered Journeys, Mobile Emotions, Gayle Letherby and Gillian Reynolds, Eds, Ashgate, London, 2009, pp121-32.
- ‘We were skivvies / We had a ball: Shame and interwar stewardesses,’ Oral History, Vol 38 (Emotions issue), no 2, 2010, pp64-74.
Suzanne J Stark, Female Tars: Women Aboard Ship in the Age of Sail, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, 1996.
Michelle Thomas, ‘"Get yourself a proper job girlie!" Recruitment, retention and women seafarers’, Maritime Policy & Management, Vol 31, no 4, 2004, pp309-18.
Caroline Walker, David Peart, and Alan Gleaves, ‘Problems in the construction of gender and professional identities for women in a United Kingdom merchant navy training school,’ Research in Post-Compulsory Education, Vol 8, no 3, 2003, pp285-304.

Women at sea as part of the UK royal navy services.
Vera Laughton-Mathews, Blue Tapestry, Hollis & Carter, London, 1949.
Marjorie H Fletcher, The WRNS: A History of the Women's Royal Naval Service, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 1989.
Paddy Gregson, Ten Degrees Below Seaweed. A True Story Of World War II Boats' Crew Wrens,
Merlin Books, Devon, 1993.
Kathleen Harland, Queen Alexandra's Royal Naval Nursing Service, Journal of the Royal Naval Medical Service, London, 1990.

Theses
Sari Mäenpää, Catering personnel on British passenger liners, 1860-1935, PH.D, Liverpool University, 2002.
Jo Stanley, “Wanted: Adventurous Girls”: Stewardesses on liners 1919-1939, PH.D. Lancaster University.

*****

2.WEBSITES
www.womensmaritimeassoc.com (US Women's Maritime Association)
www.womensmaritimeassoc.com (Women's Maritime Association, New Zealand)
http://www.itfglobal.org/women/ (International Transport Workers’ Federation, women's section)
http://www. genderedseas. blospsot.com (Gender, sex and the sea)
www.wista.net WISTA (Women's International Shipping & Trading Association)/
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/discover/people-and-places/womens-history/maritime-women/ English Heritage, history of maritime women)
http://www.nps.gov/safr/historyculture/maritimewomenhistory.htm (Women in Maritime History, San Francisco Maritime Museum)

*****

3.GENDERED TRANSPORT AND MOBILITIES
Donna Bridges, Jane Neal-Smith and Albert J Mills, Eds, Absent Aviators: Gender Issues in Aviation, Ashgate, London, 2014
Lucy Delap,
-'Thus Does Man Prove His Fitness to Be the Master of Things': Shipwrecks, Chivalry and Masculinities in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Britain, Cultural and Social History, Vol 3, no 1, 2006, pp45-74.
-‘The Woman’s Dreadnought: Maritime symbolism in Edwardian gender politics,’ The Dreadnought and the Edwardian Age, Andrew D Lambert et al,Eds, Ashgate Publishing, Abingdon, 2011, pp95-108.
Priyanthi Fernando and Gina Porter, Eds, Balancing the Load: Women, Gender and transport, Zed Press, London, 2002.
Margaret Grieco, Laurie Pickup and Richard Whipp, Eds, Gender, Transport and Employment: Impact of Travel Constraints (Oxford Studies in Transport), Avebury, Aldershot, 1989
Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of human feeling, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1983.
Robin Law, ‘Beyond “women and transport”: towards new geographies of gender and daily mobility, Progress in Human Geography, Vol 23, no 4, 1999, pp567-588.
Eileen F Lebow, Before Amelia: Women Pilots in the Early Days of Aviation, Brassey's Washington DC, 2002.
Gayle Letherby and Gillian Reynolds, Eds, Gendered Journeys, Mobile Emotions, Ashgate, London, 2009
Rosa Matheson, Women and the Great Western Railway, History Press, Stroud, 2007.
Liz Millward, Women in British Imperial Airspace: 1922-1937, McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal, 2008.
Alain Pelletier, High-Flying Women: A World History of Female Pilots, Haynes & Co, Sparkford, 2012
Nancy Pagh, At Home Afloat: Women on the Waters of the Pacific Northwest, University of Calgary Press, Calgary and University of Idaho Press, Moscow, Idaho, 2001.
Virginia Scharff, Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1999.
M Thea Sinclair, Ed, Gender, Work and Tourism, Routledge, London, 1997.
Jo Stanley,
- ‘The Swashbuckler, the Landlubbing Wimp, and the Woman in between: Myself as Pirate(ss)’ in Women’s Lives into Print: The Theory, Practice and Writing of Feminist Auto/Biography, Pauline Polkey, Ed, Macmillan, London, 1999, pp216-28.
- ‘And After the Cross-Dressed Cabin Boys and Whaling Wives? Possible Futures for Women’s Maritime Historiography,’ Journal of Transport History, Vol 23, no 1, 2002, pp9-22.
- ‘Putting Gender into Seafaring’, in Hilda Kean, Paul Martin and Sally J Morgan, Eds, Seeing History: Public History in Britain Now, Francis Boutle, London, pp81-104, 2000.
Marian Swerdlow, Underground Woman: My Four Years as a New York City Subway Conductor (Labor & Social Change), Temple University Press, 1998.
Chuchu Vivian, Entering a man's world; Women bus drivers in South Africa, LAP Lambert Academic Publishing , 2012.
Margaret Walsh, Ed, Journal of Transport History, Vol 23, no 1, 2002 (special issue on women).
Drew Whitelegg, ‘Places and Spaces I've Been: Geographies of female flight attendants in the United States’, Gender, Place & Culture, Vol 12, no 2, 2005, pp251-266
Giles Whittell, Spitfire Women of World War II, Harper Perennial, New York, 2008.
Helena Wojtczak, Railwaywomen: Exploitation, betrayal and triumph in the workplace, Hastings Press, Sussex, 2005.

*****

4.WOMEN AT THE SEA’S INTERFACE
Pat Ayers, ‘The Hidden Economy of Dockland Families: Liverpool in the 1930s’, Pat Hudson and W
Robert Lee, Women’s Work and the Family Economy, Manchester University Press, Manchester, pp 271-90, 1990.
Jan Brøgger, Nazare: Women and men in a pre-bureaucratic Portuguese fishing village, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, Boston, 1992.
Douglas Catterall and Jodi Campbell, Women in Port: Gendering Communities, Economies, and Social Networks in Atlantic Port Cities, 1500-1800, Brill Academic Publishers, Leiden, Boston and Tokyo, 2012.
Sally Cooper Cole, Women of the Praia: Work and lives in a Portuguese coastal community, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1991
Elaine Forman Crane, Ebb Tide in New England: Women, Seaports and Social Change, 1630-1800, Northeastern University Press, Boston, 1998.
Helen Doe, Enterprising women and shipping in the nineteenth century, Boydell Press, Rochester, New York and Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2009.
Hanna Hagmark-Cooper, To Be a Sailor's Wife, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2012.
Margarette Lincoln, Naval Wives and Mistresses, 1750-1815, National Maritime Museum, London, 2007.
Sena Jeta Naslund, Ahab’s Wife(a novel) Morrow/Perennial, New York, 1999
Lisa Norling, Captain Ahab Had a Wife: New England Women & the Whalefishery, 1720-1870, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2000.
Michelle Thomas, Lost at Home and Lost at Sea: The predicament of seafaring families, Seafarers International Research Centre, Cardiff, 2003.
Henry Trotter, Sugar Girls & Seamen: A journey into the world of dockside prostitution in South Africa, Jacana Media, South Africa, 2008.


A NOTE
Several slightly less relevant categories are excluded:
~ women recreational sailors
~ (in section 1) seagoing wives of masters (as they are not, quite, employees
~ women passengers
~ Only in exceptional cases are novels included; this means some of the fabricated 'autobiographies' of cross-dressed women sailors such as Hannah Snell and Lucy Brewer aren't here. Maybe they should be.